VOICES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE: EVP And You And Me

It's past midnight, friends, and it feels like a perfectly ghoulish time for some good old-fashioned ghost stories. We have monsters, creeps, and spirits on the brain today due to earlier posts, so we might as well carry on with another voyage... to the Other Side.
Tonight I'd like to talk about Electric Voice Phenomena (or "EVP" as it is better known). You might have heard those clowns on Ghost Hunters talking about it, but how much do you actually know about EVP? Is it, in fact, a mysterious way of communicating with the dead? Or is it all a scam?
Well, we here at IllCon believe EVERYTHING. It's in our contract. But hopefully we can shed a little light on this dark and shadowy subject on this dark and shadowy night. Are you afraid of the dark?

First things first, though: Let's begin with a streaming mp3 of Illogical God Art Bell interviewing members of the GIS (Ghost Investigators Society) about EVP on Coast To Coast AM. Listen to it now or listen to it later, but for fuck's sake LISTEN TO IT! This is one of my favorite C2C episodes, and was the original reason for my interest in EVP. Creeeeepy stuff.

(Sorry about the lengthy musical intro)

	Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - EVP in the House .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

(PS: THIS is what I was listening to as I wrote this post. I recommend it as background music whilst reading as well.)

The story of Electronic Voice Phenomena starts all the way back with Thomas Edison, who shared his thoughts on the subject in a 1920's interview with Scientific American. When queried about the possibilty of communicating electronically with the deceased, Edison (a religious man) was quoted as saying "It is possible to construct an apparatus which will be so delicate that if there are personalities in another existence or sphere who wish to get in touch with us in this existence or sphere, this apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity to express themselves than the tilting tables and raps and ouija boards and mediums and the other crude methods now purported to be the only means of communication."

Fringe electronics nerds, metaphysicists, and occult scientists took it from there.



Let us begin with the story of Leslie Flint (right), a British gent who lived from 1911-1994. Leslie is considered by many to be the Greatest Physical Medium of Our Century. Like the person who wrote this article - 'Leslie Flint: The Greatest Physical Medium of Our Century'.
Mr. Flint produced over 500 recordings in his many decades visiting the spirit world, using a device he referred to as his "voice box". You can find a massive collection of these recordings HERE, as well as a detailed history of EVP (beginning with Mr. Flint) HERE.

Left: Flint bound and gagged for a 1972 voice-box experiment. What a perv.

In Leslie Flint's own words: "Every living being has a substance known as ectoplasm, which is life force, and a physical medium like myself has a great deal more of it than most people. During a séance, this substance, which is sometimes also referred to as 'the power,' is drawn from the medium and fashioned by spirits into a replica of the physical vocal organs which is known as the voice-box or sometimes the mask. The communicating spirit then concentrates his or her thoughts into this voice-box, creating a frequency of vibration which reaches the sitter on earth as objective sound."

More on Flint: Death No End.



Then we have the strange story of Mr. Raymond Cass (left). Cass came from a long line of paranormal enthusiasts and began making his own EVP recordings in the early 70's. Over 20 years of activity, Cass accumulated over 2000 EVP recordings, many of them "polyglot" recordings with voices speaking several different languages in the same sentence.

Learn more about the Raymond Cass Foundation HERE.

- Another notable EVP researcher: Konstantin Raudive. His 1971 book Breakthrough was what is known as a "game-changer". In fact, several of Raudive's best recordings were posthumously collected and re-interpreted by various electronic artists on a 2002 album entitled Voices of the Dead. And guess what? You can get it HERE. (Speaking of EVP albums, anyone else remember Hermann Kopp and that concept album he made based on Spanish EVP recordings? It was printed in a limited edition of ONLY 99. Who has one for me?)

- For the skeptics: EVP experiments involving the infamous Faraday Cage.

No discussion about EVP would be complete without the inclusion of Friedrich Jurgenson (right and below), a Swedish engineer who pioneered both the technical and spiritual aspects of EVP and EVP capture. Often considered the 'Father of EVP', you can learn more about Jurgenson here, here, or here. What a weirdo.

Wanna see a cool video? OK.
To quote its creators, "the voices from space are coming through an ancient radio".

Before returning to discussions about more recent developments in the world of Electronic Voice Phenomena, one more blast from the past:

This is the story of metaphysicist George Meek, and his contact with deceased engineer George Mueller (right). Meek was a seeker who travelled the world in search of mystic energies, crossing through the Far East several times before settling down with his wife in Florida. His life story is a long and strange one, but the chapter on EVP is most likely the strangest. From 'The Research of George W. Meek', by Mark Macy:

"In 1979, he (Meek) and his colleague Bill O'Neil developed the Spiricom device, a set of 13 tone generators spanning the range of the adult male voice. O'Neil was psychically gifted, and he collaborated with his spirit friends while developing the large radio-like apparatus, which gave off a droning buzz that filled the room. When O'Neil spoke in its presence, you could hear his voice getting wrapped up in the buzzing noises of the Spiricom machine. He worked on the machine for months, and then a most amazing thing happened. Another voice began to get wrapped up in the radio sounds too—a voice belonging to someone who was present in the room, but invisible. The voice of a spirit.
The spirit collaborator soon identified himself as Dr George Jeffries Mueller, a college physics teacher who had died in 1967 and had now come close to the vibration of the Earth to assist Meek and O'Neil in opening a communication bridge between the two worlds. O'Neil and Mueller went on to record more than 20 hours of dialog between 1979 and 1982."

Meek planned on mass marketing the Spiricom and selling it to the general public, after obtaining massive amounts of technical help from the deceased physics teacher. But all of the sudden, in 1982, Mueller's voice disappeared altogether and the Spiricom stopped functioning. And hence the odd story of Meek and Mueller came to an end.

- Article on George Meek and George J. Mueller from Unexplainable.net

- Online version of George Meek and The Metascience Research Team's manual Spiricom: An Electromagnetic-Etheric Systems Approach to Communications
with other Levels of Human Consciousness

Modern times have seen a huge resurgence in interest regarding EVP, due to both television shows like the aforementioned Ghost Hunters and also the proliferation of a large ghost-seeking community on the internet. Home-made EVP capture devices like the one shown to the left are all the rage these days, although almost any hand-held recording device with the input volume cranked all the way up will work.
If you'd like to make your own recordings, start here.

So ARE EVP recordings really the spirits of the dead, reaching back through static and white noise to communicate with those of us still stranded on the Earthly plane? Or is it all just wishful thinking? Arguments can be made for both cases, but it is up to the individual to decide.

But it's getting late...

You must be getting sleepy...

Enough talk, though. Let's check out some examples...

Seriously, if you were an ectoplasmic apparition from the other side with only one shot at really freaking some people out, what would you say?



"I have the body of a pig". Yeah, that works.

And while it's quite clear that this example is 100%, without-a-doubt authentic, you've still got the super-obvious fakes like the ones from YouTube user JoyousinJesus:



C'mon, really?
JoyousinJesus even presents another EVP recording that only REAL Christians can hear:



Anything? Anybody? Didn't think so.
This one's pretty creepy, though:



One last thing: EVP's GREATEST HITS!!!